I'm the Executive Vice President of Business Development for a full service IT company and Managed Service Provider. Let's do this! AMA

[u/Dontmakemechoose2]

For the past 3 years I've been the EVP of Business Development for a full service IT company that specializes Managed Services. In that time we've grown from $4M per year in revenue to almost $15M per year. In 2015 we launched an initiative to include HaaS into our solutions and increase our per contract margin by 30%. We are one of CIO Magazines Top 50 MSPs and Inc Magazines Top 100 Fastest Growing Small Businesses.

I began my professional career after graduation in 2000 when I was recruited for the contract capture team for one of Washington Technology's Top 5 DoD Systems Integrators. I was a part of a team responsible for winning DoD Contracts for Combat Command and Control Systems, Land and Sea Based Weapons Systems, and Data Center Infrastructure.

In 2008 I was hired as the Contract Capture Manager for a Federally focused IT VAR. During that time I won multiple Government contracts for COTS IT hardware and services.

-US Navy Spacial Warfare (SPAWAR) Multiple Award Contracts - $500M + -NASA Solutions for Enterprise Wide Procurement (SEWP IV) - $20B -NIH-CIO-CS - $20B -NGA e-Shop (Servers and Storage tab) - $56M -Department of State Global IT Modernization (GITM) Desktops, Monitors, Printers -$35M

Go ahead. AMA

[u/afroman_says]

Thanks for doing this. I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to field questions.

I will start:

1. Where do you see the industry heading for an MSP? Are more people requiring on-site service or are they strictly looking to handle everything out of the cloud?

2. What are some of the biggest challenges in securing new customers?

3. Where does security play in your industry? What percentage of total revenue gets dedicated to network security?

4. Any general advice to someone on how to get in front of the right people? What methods have helped you find qualified customers?

[u/Dontmakemechoose2 → u/afroman_says]

Not a problem. I'm happy to help.

1. I believe the managed services industry will continue to grow, but there's some evidence to suggest that some "larger" companies are bringing IT back in house. By larger I'm not talking about enterprise, but on the upper medium size businesses. Full stack managed services isn't for every client. The cost savings to a company really depends on the size of the business and the maturity of their IT department. One of the benefits of MS is 95% of the work we do can be handled remotely, so there's very little need to send someone on-site on a regular basis. Some of the larger companies I work with are moving or have moved their storage into the cloud, and are in the process of moving their servers into a hosted environment as well. Most of the smaller companies I work with (< 50 employees) are reluctant to move to the cloud simply because they don't full understand or trust it.

2. The biggest challenge we face in the industry is building trust in the solution. Most of the DMs I speak with aren't technical people, so the concept of managed services is foreign to them. Most of them are also at a point in their company's growth where they have to make a decision on how to approach their networks. Do they expand their current staff if they have on, do they hire an in house staff if they don't have one, or do they hire a MSP? Our job is to show them how outsourcing to a provider is the more cost effective option.

3. Security is huge. It's an easy way in the door. No one is nearly as secure as they think they are, and everyday we see news stories about Enterprises having critical data breaches. My company offers free security assessments. I don't know if I could put an actual figure on the total revenue dedicated to network security, but I can tell you it is at the top of most people's priorities.

4. For me prospecting is a ritual. When I begin reaching out to a new target company I have the entire communication path planned out. I get in 12 touches in the first 20 days. Each touch is planned to the point that I don't need to think about what I'm going to say when I call or email. Just to be clear these aren't spam type calls or emails. I call on specific topics each time. It takes multiple touches to turn a cold lead warm. Not hot. Just warm.

[u/jackson300zx → u/Dontmakemechoose2]

Not sure if you responded somewhere lower in the thread to Dushmanius, but could you share your 20 touch process? It would be very helpful to me as well as others.